Should Netflix Bring Narnia Back to the Big Screen? | Talking Beasts
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According to recent reports, Writer/Director Greta Gerwig is pushing for a Thanksgiving 2026 theatrical release for her upcoming Chronicles of Narnia movie adaptation, but Netflix is reluctant. How much does a theatrical release matter? What is Netflix so concerned about? Listen to the discussion and then post a comment below!
Watch the post-show chatter in which we discuss other Narnia-Netflix news from the past several months.
Yes, I want to go to cinema and see it before seeing them again on stream. The magic of a place like Narnia need to be experienced on the big screen
If Netflix needs to market a $200 million dollar movie for wide release, plus fund the movie, these costs could be $400 million (the budget, plus the same amount for global marketing, which is commonplace for big budget movies).
So, plus the reported $250 million they paid for the rights to the Narnia books, that’s about $650 million spent to get this movie to us, before one pair of eyes have seen it. I wonder if they are willing to invest that much? I hope so. The world needs stories like Narnia. I am assuming – poorly informed though I am – that a direct to streaming release does not cost that much to market. (I know the fee for the rights allows more than one film to be made, don’t get me wrong.)
It seems like Snyder’s Rebel Moon movie was meant to be a big deal, but it now seems to have faded into “one of those movies in the list” on Netflix.
Going from the small at-home screen to a large format screen at iMAX is going from one extreme to the other! Although maybe they prefer giving a movie an iMAX release over a wide release because it is limited and draws more fans to watch it at home, because they don’t live close to an iMAX. After I wrote this sentence glumPuddle suggested that.
If they want to market it to the mass audience and also the Christian faith-based audience like Disney did, things have increased in the faith-based film market since 2005. Christian movies these days are making sometimes $50m off a $15m budget, or more. So that is also something that could help, as much as I know the name of Jesus should not be used for greed. Mustering the faith-based audience would be just one small but significant part of the whole audience.
Like Glumpuddle and probably quite a few others, I would just love to see Narnia return to the big screen for the “experience” factor. The suggestion that the new series might start out as IMAX films is an awesome thought, although I hope that if Gerwig really is pushing for this, it’s not just because she wants to throw in a lot of huge action scenes and other spectacular stuff that doesn’t necessarily do anything to enhance the plot… But it’s very interesting that it seems she is at least trying to use some leverage here to give her movie(s) a better quality treatment than what Netflix usually does. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens! Great discussion, thank you Glumpuddle and Impending Doom.
Thanks for this episode, it’s a great distraction and escape from all this post-elections coverage! Bring Narnia to the theatres!
A wide cinema release is so important. As someone who doesn’t have a Netflix subscription, I didn’t recognize most of Netflix’s top 10 movies this year, whereas I have at least heard about the top 10 list of movies released in cinemas. It just matters.
I’d like a combination of big screen releases and a streaming series called Voyages of the Dawn Treader. (Don’t hate me for the title). I love your show, Puddleglum is also my favorite Narnian!
Wait, Impending Doom didn’t see LWW or PC in theatres? Oh gosh… I feel old.
Regardless of how this all pans out, I’m just fascinated by the process.
Great podcast episode as always, guys.
Hey guys. Nice conversation. I still enjoy listening to Brian & Company. But I need to say it: I don’t mean to sound bitter, but all of these recent developments (about Narnia on-screen) are a little bit depressing. Less because it’s Narnia under a director/studio I dislike. More because there has been so many false promises in these past 10-15 years, much of which even Narniaweb seems to have had a hand in: “Get your hopes real high, wait for years, nothing happens, nobody remembers it except you, no one involved seems to care that the project didn’t happen. Time takes its toll.” Until I see a still or a trailer for a new project, I’m not gonna care too much about all this. I’m in my 30’s now, I have a life outside Narniaweb, I’m no longer a kid excited for the 4th Narnia film. It had its moment in my life. But if anything Narnia is made, I pray that it’s good, or at least, better than the last Narnia film. (Shudders when remembering, haha)
@J, FWIW, it’s possible that some people involved in canceled Narnia projects (David Magee, Joe Johnston, Matthew Aldrich, etc.) do remember and care but it would look bad for them to be complaining in interviews about movies or shows they wanted to make that didn’t happen.
Narnia returning to the mainstream will be a great thing for the books. It’s a great perspective to be reminded of! I’m pretty pumped to see Gerwig’s adaptations!
I really appreciate how this episode made the best argument possible for both why Netflix would want to release a Narnia movie to cinemas and the best argument possible why they wouldn’t. One of my favorite things about Talking Beasts is that tries to look at arguments from both sides. My ideal situation would be that Gerwig first makes a movie adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which is released to streaming (since I’ve already seen an adaptation of that book in cinemas) and then an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew which is released to cinemas. From what this episode says though, it sounds like it’d be likelier (if anything) that the first would be in cinemas and the second not.
Were mainstream audiences really rolling their eyes over the prospect of another Narnia movie before Greta Gerwig got onboard? I mean, there have only been three movies based on the books and the last one was from 2010! (You could argue there have been four if you count the made-for-TV animated movie of LWW from the 70s but does anyone besides fans remember that?) I understand a lot of people aren’t interested in Narnia, but would they really be rolling their eyes at this point? I guess I’ll never understand mainstream audiences.
To be honest, I’m kind of dreading Gerwig fans being introduced to the series through her adaptations because…. well, it’s complicated. It’s going to make it sound like I dislike her adaptation of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and I don’t. I actually think it’s the best written adaptation out there. But it bugs me when fans assume that it’s exactly what Alcott would have written. When some fans of the book object to it being ambiguous, at most, if Jo and Prof. Bhaer ended up together in the movie, Gerwig fans always say that that’s what Alcott wanted to write but she had to have Jo get married to make the book marketable. They imply that if you like the romance between the characters in the book, you’re not a real fan of Alcott. (FWIW, I’m not a big fan of the romance.) It’s true enough that Alcott imagined Jo as being “a literary spinster” like herself and had to give her a husband for marketing purposes. But what Greta Gerwig never mentions is that she also didn’t want to write a girls’ book at all. She preferred writing about boys and Little Women was an assignment from her publisher. Does that mean an adaptation should change the female characters to male ones to be true to Alcott’s intentions? The fact that the book explores relationships between women is part of what made it popular and arguably groundbreaking and it’s clearly something that attracts Gerwig (and many others.) Does that mean she’s not a real Alcott fan? Certainly not! I think Gerwig’s interpretation of Little Women is very true to the book and thoughtful and reasonable and everything. Like I said, I believe it’s the best written movie adaptation. But she’s definitely focusing on aspects of the work and the author to which she relates and ignoring aspects to which she doesn’t relate. Which is FINE! That’s what every adapter does. It just irritates me when the fandom accepts everything about the adapter’s interpretation without doing their own analysis. (I really don’t blame Gerwig for this. She seems the kind of artist who intends for her work to be critically analyzed. I just blame her fans.)
To end on a less grumpy note, while there aren’t any new Narnia adaptations this year, there has been a movie adaptation of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson, another book from my childhood that I love, recently released. I was a little scared from the marketing that it would be too sappy and “message-y.” But I saw it and it was wonderful. Most of it was straight from the book and what was wasn’t I ended up being enjoyable in its own way. Mind you, like I wrote about Gerwig’s Little Women, the adapters had “an agenda” but, also like what I wrote about Gerwig’s Little Women, it was a reasonable and extremely well written interpretation. (And who among us doesn’t have “an agenda” after all?) I intend to do a full review on my blog next month. The movie deserves to make a lot of money IMO. I highly recommend people watch it.
I should clarify something I wrote above. I mentioned that I kind of dreading newcomers being introduced to Narnia through Netflix’s new movies. That doesn’t mean I’m dreading the movies themselves. I’m actually really curious to see them. It’s just the internet discourse I’m kind of dreading.